Victor Sullivan wrote:One thing I would add is a penalty for holding both a Union and a Confederate "flank," as it doesn't make much sense that one would benefit from holding both sides, if that makes sense. The idea of the penalty would be more to encourage players to stick to one "side of the war," and I think this could play out neatly in 1v1s.

As for the box format you're using, I'm frankly not a fan. Mostly this is because it just makes your map look far more confusing that it really is.

-Sully

How would the "no opposing flanks" rule get reflected in XML coding? I can't think of how to do it.

If someone held Confederate Left and Union Center, let's say. You'd have the continents, "Confederate Left" for +4 and "Union Center" for +5, and an additional continent, "Union Center and Confederate Left" (or whatever you wish to call it. Perhaps "Opposing flanks" or something) for +0, that overrides "Confederate Left" and "Union Center".

As for your fear of overcomplicating things, Marshal, I honestly think this would enhance the gameplay for reasons stated before. As I said, it's more to encourage a player to "pick sides", so to speak, and I think it would really work nicely for 1v1s (as most likely one would choose Union, the other, Confederate).

Victor Sullivan wrote:If someone held Confederate Left and Union Center, let's say. You'd have the continents, "Confederate Left" for +4 and "Union Center" for +5, and an additional continent, "Union Center and Confederate Left" (or whatever you wish to call it. Perhaps "Opposing flanks" or something) for +0, that overrides "Confederate Left" and "Union Center".

Okay. I understand, and that's pretty cool. Do any other games have a feature like this?

Say I own two Confederate continents and then take over one Union one. Do I lose both my Confeds or just one of them. Which one?

How would you word the warning on the map? "Holding any colored Union bonus negates holding any/all Confederate ones and vice-versa" ??

Comment: even in a 1 vs 1 game this might be less effective than you hope. Most of the continents are roads, and all the big ones are. Plus, if I've "chosen" Confed, I still would want Union terts if I'm going after the road they're part of. So the separation/isolation won't necessarily be obvious and distinct as you may be picturing. It's an interesting idea and would make the game unique (so far as I know), but let's make sure all the details fall into place. Will it be too easy for forget the rule and then accidentally lose all your hard-won bonuses and the game? Does the Confederate "side" have a huge advantage because the Union is blocked from getting to most of the road bonuses? Or is that made up for by the fact that the Union has interior lines - especially useful if reinforcements are adjacent only. Is it screwy that this rule, which is a BIG rule, applies to a small minority of the continents on the map? Wouldn't it make more sense to use it on a map where just about all the terts "belong" to one side or the other? (I'm working on just such a map for a different Civil War battle!!)

Finally: do we really want to make a map that caters to 1 vs 1 games? Aren't they used mostly for point-farming, which is a lowly practice? Let's say that it turns out that going for the Confeds is much better than going for the Union -- not at all unlikely but perhaps not immediately obvious to the novice -- wouldn't that make this an IDEAL map for point-farmers? They'd know to go for the Confeds at all costs.

Making interior lines or exterior envelopment valuable is very cool, but again: in a game where there aren't so many other bonuses to be had.

Minister X wrote:Comment: even in a 1 vs 1 game this might be less effective than you hope. Most of the continents are roads, and all the big ones are. Plus, if I've "chosen" Confed, I still would want Union terts if I'm going after the road they're part of. So the separation/isolation won't necessarily be obvious and distinct as you may be picturing. It's an interesting idea and would make the game unique (so far as I know), but let's make sure all the details fall into place. Will it be too easy for forget the rule and then accidentally lose all your hard-won bonuses and the game? Does the Confederate "side" have a huge advantage because the Union is blocked from getting to most of the road bonuses? Or is that made up for by the fact that the Union has interior lines - especially useful if reinforcements are adjacent only. Is it screwy that this rule, which is a BIG rule, applies to a small minority of the continents on the map? Wouldn't it make more sense to use it on a map where just about all the terts "belong" to one side or the other? (I'm working on just such a map for a different Civil War battle!!)

First, remember, a player has to hold an entire Confederate flank and an entire Union flank for the bonus to be negated. One could still take individual opposing territories and be fine. And if you feel one side has an advantage over the other, then adjust the bonuses/connections as you feel is necessary. Also, if a player forgets about the rule, and it is clearly in the legend, they only have themselves to blame!

Finally: do we really want to make a map that caters to 1 vs 1 games? Aren't they used mostly for point-farming, which is a lowly practice? Let's say that it turns out that going for the Confeds is much better than going for the Union -- not at all unlikely but perhaps not immediately obvious to the novice -- wouldn't that make this an IDEAL map for point-farmers? They'd know to go for the Confeds at all costs.

Again, you can make adjustments as you feel is necessary. Second, mostly large team games (like Quads) are used to farm. At any rate, I don't think that should be a concern.

"Hold opposing flanks and lose your bonus!" is how I might put it.-Sully

Is the Union Center a flank? What are "opposing" flanks, only the Union right and Confed left and vice-versa? This is WAY too ambiguous. Until we can come up with a formula that at least I can understand, this is a non-starter.try:"Simultaneously holding any Union and any Confederate bonus invalidates both/all" and where the map currently shows just "Bonuses" bottom center, it should read "Union Bonuses" and Confederate Bonuses" on separate lines. The color coding would also be used in the explanatory sentence to further link it to the types of bonuses. That whole bottom center section would be used for this. Autodeploys can be explained on the map itself (?) with just "+1"s and "+2"s next to terts.

AndyDufresne wrote:I don't think 1vs1 is ideal for farmers. I play a lot of 1vs1, and I'm certainly not farming!

--Andy

I wonder how much you guys peruse the public games? A lot of high-ranking players post a dozen or two 1 vs 1 games at a time, waiting for suckers to accept their challenge. Do they just love playing total strangers 1 vs 1? Or are they farming? (In either case I avoid them like the plague and pity those who don't.)

1vs1 isn't ideal compared to 4v4 Quads on Waterloo or 8p Freestyle Assassin on CC City Mogul. It still works and it's the modus operandi of some folks, but it's nowhere near as lucrative.

As for the "invalidating bonuses" idea, from a historical perspective it makes sense, but it will seriously penalize someone trying to lock up an area of the map in the mid- to late-game. To keep from nulling a rather nice bonus they would have to intentionally create more borders to their stuff by excluding one territory of the other flank. When historicity actively causes people to do stuff that just doesn't strategically make sense, historicity should be tossed out the door.

TaCktiX wrote:When historicity actively causes people to do stuff that just doesn't strategically make sense, historicity should be tossed out the door.

I agree with this absolutely, but the rule in question isn't really a matter of reproducing some specific aspect of this battle so much as it's designed (at least in my mind) to generate some sense of there being a "line" or "front" to a battle.

...you know, the more I think about it the more I don't like it. If I'm the Confederate left flank I want to take over the Union right. That's the whole idea. I should be rewarded for it, not penalized.

I know that's not the consideration Victor Sullivan had originally. Here's how he put it:

One thing I would add is a penalty for holding both a Union and a Confederate "flank," as it doesn't make much sense that one would benefit from holding both sides, if that makes sense. The idea of the penalty would be more to encourage players to stick to one "side of the war," and I think this could play out neatly in 1v1s.

It makes some sense as he puts it, but none as we were just looking at it. And let's recall that the Union and Confed lines were added more so the map would the look of a battle rather than to add tactical complexity; more to get the Civil War appearance than a simulation.

Given this plus the practical difficulties in implementing the idea... let's drop it.

Victor Sullivan wrote:Fair enough. I thought the idea was at least worth discussing.

-Sully

Indeed it is... I think I or someone I know proposed this once before though... wait, I've got it- TheBastard and his original maps, like Reconquista. He eventually sort of came up with a scheme, but it was complicated.

A page back MarshalNey had suggested circles instead of rectangles. I don't think even he realized how good a suggestion that was. It gave me lots more space and enabled me to use blobs to identify the flanks, simplifying the map considerably. I also reduced the font size of the tert names, went from three-digit army numbers to two-digit, altered the appearance of the dotted lines (and added some), and moved the flags off the main map and into the legend area. The flags can't co-exist with those red and blue blobs.

I don't know about anyone else but I love the new "spiderweb" look. I think it really captures something about the tactical characteristics of the battlefield.

I don't know much about the historic details of this battle, but the gameplay looks interesting enough.

My only critiques are graphical. The canons look out of place. The background has a rustic feel - almost hand-drawn, yet the canons are clearly photos with a 3d perspective. I think you should simplify these and make them flat to fit in with the rest of the map. Even a silhouette might suffice.

That said, why are there so many canons? Re-using the same graphic suggests that it is part of the gameplay, but they seem to only exist for decoration. If that is the case, perhaps you should alter the canons with muskets or structures from the period. Again, not intimately familiar with the subject material, but I'm sure others can add more.

The red & blue highlights on the Union/Confederate bonuses in the legend look rather sloppy. I'd just use a clean, rounded box there or change the font color.

Lastly, the font you've chosen for territory names looks really choppy to me. Try some different anti-alias settings to make these crisper.

And here it is- viola!This doesn't mean gameplay discussion must end, but as the map is deemed to have met or exceeded the Foundry standard, the focus now turns to the graphics of this 'spiderweb' battle map.

Congratulations MinisterX!

Can't wait to see this in play- I'd say get cracking but you already work at such a pace that makes me dizzy

lostatlimbo wrote:...why are there so many canons? Re-using the same graphic suggests that it is part of the gameplay, but they seem to only exist for decoration. If that is the case, perhaps you should alter the canons with muskets or structures from the period.

I've allowed this to happen on purpose. I think it makes the typesetting look handmade and old. It's not a result of any anti-alias setting. It occurs when you rotate the type a tiny fraction of a degree. I'll fix the worst of them.

Minister X wrote:I've allowed this to happen on purpose. I think it makes the typesetting look handmade and old. It's not a result of any anti-alias setting. It occurs when you rotate the type a tiny fraction of a degree. I'll fix the worst of them.

In that case, I would suggest applying a little bit of blur or smudge to the text, so as to make it appear as if the ink blotched. Then it will look intentionally crooked, but not so sharp and crisp.

Using a free font from dafont.com might be a perfectly reasonable suggestion but my typographic roots run deep into the past, when fonts made by amateurs were as likely as not to crash your system. I own 3,297 fonts that I've purchased from reliable sources, and which I can use without restriction. I'll stick with those.

But for folks willing to take more risks than I, there sure are some fun-looking faces there!

I'm sure you'll be good with fonts then if you've got typographic roots.... lol

So, how about some TOPOgraphic roots? Gettysburg was won and lost on the terrain of the battlefield. The map need relief, it's great there is a territory named Cemetery Ridge... but where's the Ridge?! Add those features in and lets get this thing going!

• Type has been cleaned up everywhere.• Small graphic "accessories" have been changed; cannon reduced to one, image of cemetery arch added, and image of struggling soldiers added. Those struggled soldiers will look familiar to philatelists. I robbed them from the US Postal Service! For the centennial of the very battle I'm mapping, the post office issued this stamp:

• The Union and Confederate bonuses bottom center were re-worded and the shading was fixed.• The six "flank blobs" have gone from solid color to outline plus barely visible fill. This was done primarily to accommodate...• Topography: hills and ridges. I surveyed every single CC map to see how others had depicted changes in elevation. The ONLY relevant map was Austerlitz, and cartographer pamoa made sure there was no type covering up his shadings. I don't have that luxury but I've done my best. I present two versions: one with hills and ridges depicted, and one without. I'd really appreciate some expressions of preference - which do you like best or hate least?